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POEMS AND LYRICS.
79
MELAMPUS.
I.
With love exceeding a simple love of the things
That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;
Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings
From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;
Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;
Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;
The good physician Melampus, loving them all,
Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.
II.
For him the woods were a home and gave him the key
Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.
